All Stalin's women : gender and power in Soviet art of the 1930s

Examines how the representation of gender in Soviet art during the second and third Five-Year Plans articulated relationships of domination in Stalinist society. Using female characters to stand for 'the people' as a whole, painting and sculpture drew on conventional gender codes and hierarchy to naturalize the subordination of society to the Stalinist state and legitimate the sacrifice of women's needs to those of industrialization. The prevalence of female protagonists was closely connected with the promotion of the Stalin cult: women modeled the ideal attitude of 'love, honor and obedience.' As the triumph of conservative aesthetic hierarchies paralleled the restoration of traditional gender roles, Reid asks how women artists were to operate in these conditions. ;